


Elmwood Close

by Dryad



Category: Tweed & Co. - Colin Forbes
Genre: Gen, Mention of Domestic Violence, NC17 for Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:59:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dryad/pseuds/Dryad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Don't get that look on your face, baby. You don't look pretty like that."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elmwood Close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lullabymoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lullabymoon/gifts).



Lynn Stroud sat at the table, stirring three sugars into her coffee, then adding a streak of cream. She watched the cream swirl white into the dark brown coffee before it dissippated, turning sienna instead. At least the day was pleasant, sunny with a few clouds scudding across the sky, even if her thoughts and the conversation to come were not.

Keith Dunham plopped into the chair next to her. He leaned back casually in his chair, slung one ankle across the other. Dressed in a dark gray tee- shirt and acid washed blue jeans he was easy, relaxed. "Look at you," he said, eyeing her from tip to toe. "You look like a dream in that dress, like a skinny Marilyn Monroe."

She didn't look anything like Marilyn Monroe - oh, that was the point. She sipped her coffee and looked at the passing crowd. There they were, men, women, children. Completely oblivious to what was going on around them.

"Don't get that look on your face, baby. You don't look pretty like that."

She hated him. She _hated_ him! The worst boyfriend she had ever had. If only she'd realized before she'd ever gotten involved. Now he was the lump in her gut, the pebble in her shoe. God, she was stupid.

"And those legs, mm! Delicious."

Tucking her legs under her chair as best she could, she wished she had chosen a longer dress, or even trousers. At least her sweater covered her upper arms, and she'd tied the ribbon across her chest because she had gotten a chill after a passing cloud had hidden the sun. "How long - "

"Shut it," Keith said, his mouth thinning, his gaze hard. "When Andy gets here we're going to walk to Concord Mews, and then we're going to go inside, and you're going to call your pals."

"They're not my pals. I don't even know them they just moved in next to me!"

"See, thing is, Lynn, I don't believe ya."

Lynn shook her head, clutched the purse in her lap."Baby, I don't know who they are."

He snorted.

Surreptitiously she watched him, looked at the women (and they were always women) he looked at and judged. He was still a handsome man, what had attracted her to him in the first place. Dark hair, a narrow face and gray eyes, a fit, muscular body. And he was fantastic in bed. But, as she had only found out far too late, his mind was the least attractive thing about him. The man she had thought was perfect; good-looking, athletic, and who earned a good wage, was really low-life scum. An arms-dealer. A slaver. A drug courier.

She had believed everything he had told her - and why not? There had been nothing to suggest he was anything other than whom he had presented himself to be. She had been saving him up, was going to introduce him to her mum, to her friends and co-workers. Well, some of them, anyway. She had planned a grand party for the August holidays in Blackpool. She'd have to cancel it now, of course.

Keith abruptly sat up, then stood up. He pointed at Lynn without looking at her and said, "Stay there."

Lynn sat back, wary of what he was going to do. He'd hit her only once, a slap when they were in bed the previous night. She was no fool, she knew she wasn't made to put up with that nonsense. She wasn't so stupid as to tell him that, though. No, she'd lain there in the dark, listening to him breathe. Her plan was simple; in the morning, gather her things and go home. Get the locks changed, including the ones on the windows. Talk to her friends about staying over for a few nights, maybe a week or two. Perhaps get a dog.

It was a good plan, a solid plan. Except he hadn't left. After breakfast he had tossed her the Marilyn dress, and then he had stayed, wandering about the flat as if he knew she wanted out as soon as she could. And then they had come to this Italian-esque outdoor cafe. Where they waited, and waited, and waited some more.

He was convinced she knew something about her neighbors, when nothing could be further from the truth. Two blokes and their sister, just moved to London from Liverpool. She'd met them in the hallway, helped the sister carry in her china, whatever could be sinister about that, she didn't know.

Keith shook hands with a ginger-haired man who was short and so musclebound the sleeves of his black tee shirt strained against his skin. Poorly inked naval tattoos spotted his skin from wrists to elbows. The two of them came back to the table, where Keith took Lynn by the upper arm and hauled her to her feet.

"Oi, mate!" called a man at the next table. He glanced at Lynn, shook his head.

"She's fine," growled Keith. "Aren't you?"

Torn with sudden indecision, she let him pull her away from the table. and down the cobblestoned street, Keith's new friend ambling behind. A few streets later they ducked into Elmwood Close, which being more or less a covered alley, was brightly dark and littered with styrofoam coffee cups, broken needles and used condoms. There was also the sweet stink of old garbage and a trail of filthy water down the center of the cobbles. Now Lynn began to get really frightened. "Where are we going? I want to go home - Keith, I want to go home!"

"Andy, keep her quiet," muttered Keith, shoving her roughly against the brick wall.

Andy held her against the wall by simply placing one heavy hand on her shoulder. She shivered and tried to pull her sweater more tightly against herself, as if that could be a protection against whatever was to come. Was his plan to sell her? To bring her to some brothel in the Netherlands and make use of her there? Her current hair color, even if it was from a bottle, might be attractive enough to some men.

With a quick glance to either end of the close, Keith stepped to a door that was locked and, taking lock picks from his jeans pocket, did the dirty against the door. After a few minutes of jiggling, the door was open and he was inside. From her position directly across from the door, she could see that although stairs led up to the left, beyond the door was really nothing more than a small storage space. Odd, that. There were boxes on the right and stacked in front of Keith, but he ignored them to rummage behind the stairwell.

He tossed a couple of duffle bags out to the close, one of which fell with heavy clinking, the other rolling to Lynn's feet. She wondered what was in the heavy bag, maybe guns? Tools? Golf clubs? She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, turned and looked - it was the man from the cafe, slowly stalking down the close.

"You all right, love?"

Andy's grip briefly tightened on her shoulder, hard enough to make her squirm before he let go to face the stranger. "Piss off, this is private business."

"Come over here, sweetheart," called the man, motioning with one hand.

Keith swiftly joined Andy. He stood tall, clenching his fists."Fuck off."

Lynn glanced down at the ground, looking for something, anything that might get her out of the situation. Frankly, she didn't want to touch anything on the ground. She'd made sure not to step in the oozing piles of garbage in the first place, and trying to find oh, a rock, oh anything she could use to defend herself in the muck was damned difficult to do.

"No, _you_ fuck off, you fucking wanker," said the stranger. "Come on, darlin', come over by me."

What was - was there? - Lynn caught sight of a triangular edge of an old, broken brick under a scrap of smiling Page Three girl and picked it up even as Andy and Keith started for the stranger. There was something slimy under her thumb but she didn't consider it for more than a second as she came up behind Andy and whacked him in the back of the head with the brick. He went to his knees and she hit him again to make sure he stayed down.

And then the wall slapped her in the head and she slumped to the ground, the world spinning in her vision.

"Hey!"

Lynn heard the shout and then the grunts of Keith and the stranger as they fought, the heavy thuds of fists against flesh. Her head hurt badly, warmth running down her face. Nausea struck when she looked at her fingers after touching her head, because the bleeding, god, she was _bleeding_. She had to help - as she struggled to her feet, something dropped to the ground with a hard thunk, a familiar sound from her youth.

Even as she reached for the gun someone was smashed into the wall and dropped, groaning before falling silent. She grabbed the gun and stood, dizzy and wavering. Blood dripped into one eye and both had double vision.

"Lynn! Lynn, put the gun down," said Keith.

The sound of his voice made her more sure of who she was aiming at, even if there were two of them. Her would-be savior was down for the count, so she had to be the one to save them both. "You stay there! Stay away from us!"

"Lynn, come on, it's me, Keith. You know I wouldn't hurt you."

She laughed a little hysterically at that, even though it made her headache worse. "You have a choice, Keith. I know who you are and what you do, and I can't let you get away with it any more."

He took a step, and then another, one arm stretched out to her. "Sweetheart, don't be - "

Lynn pulled the trigger. Once, and again when he was down, just to make sure he stayed down.

Okay.

Now what.

Keeping a loose grip on the gun, she slid along the wall, stumbling over the silent stranger, as far from Keith as possible. He was still alive, she could hear his burbling breaths. Well, he might not be alive for much longer, but she didn't have it in herself to feel sorry for him. Now, if she remembered rightly, there was a telephone box at the end of the next street over...which way? The damned street signs were too hard to read. "Hell," she muttered.

"Jesus _Christ!"_

The voice came from the right, not behind, and it sounded familiar - oh god, yes! "Bob?"

"Paula! Are you hurt?"

Lynn sagged with relief at the gentle touch of hands on her head and shoulder. "Just a head wound. Keith is in the close along with his mate Andy and another man, a bloke who tried to help me. He's the one in the green shirt. I'm sorry, I can't really see right now."

"It's fine, fine. Do me a favor and sit before you fall, yeah? Just right here. I'm going to go check on them."

She did as he asked, grateful someone else was taking over the next few hours went by in a blur. After her visit to the hospital she went back to her flat, arranged for the locks to be changed. She threw the Marilyn dress into the trash and took a lukewarm shower. Then, after a cup of herbal tea and a Tunnocks Tea Cake, she curled up on the sofa with a pen and notebook and wrote down everything as she remembered it.

Mid-morning the next day and Tweed was at his desk, a plate of biscuits on the table next to him and a pot of coffee gently steaming in the coolness of the air. He leaned back in his chair and looked her over, nodded to himself. "I know it's early, but I broke out the Bourbon biscuits just for you."

"McVittie's Chocolate Digestives would have been fine," she said, snagging one of the biscuits and biting into the end of it. Seriously, what she really wanted was the coffe, which smelled fresh and strong. "What did you think?"

"It's a good preliminary report. I would have liked more of a chance to work your friend before you shot him."

Paula hoped her inner turmoil at his words didn't show. She finished her biscuit, poured herself a cup of coffee, added one sugar. "You would have preferred him to kill me instead?"

"Of course not! Paula, I - " Tweed stopped speaking. He frowned and stared at her, as if he couldn't quite figure out either what he wanted to say, or what he wanted her to say.

But she felt it, too. The rare disharmony between the two of them.

"Did you know, when you started dating him?"

"Of course not! It was just by chance that I overheard him talking about Shane Watkins. The merest of coincidences."

"And yet that coincidence has lead us here. I've set Dai Jones on the trail in Yugoslavia, and Helen Agricola in Manchester. His death wasn't a complete waste."

What...he was criticising her?

"I want you to forget that name. Lynn Stroud. Let it be the last time you hear it spoken," he said the last sharply, as if he wanted to strike all memory of it from her history.

How could she? Lynn was a part of her. Admittedly, not a very big part, but the her that could have been. "Well. Thanks for the advice, but I'd better get back to the final version of my report. Ta for the biscuit."

Tweed sat up as she rocketed to her feet and walked away from his desk. She ignored the plaintive way he called her name, too enraged to take his feelings into consideration.

Bob Newman caught up to her as she walked down the hall after leaving Tweed's office. "Paula! Wait, wait, just wait a minute."

She stopped, not bothering to hide her irritation. "I need to finish my report."

"Yes, I know," he said, moving out of Anita Jenkins' way as she headed towards the canteen. Newman lowered his voice until he was speaking barely above a whisper. "He doesn't understand, Paula. He only knows what it's like because he's read about it, not because he's experienced it himself."

She had to look up at him, then. "What do you mean?"

An unhappy little smile turned up on his lips as he gave a one shoulder shrug. "My mum. Her whole marriage was like that."

"Like what?" she added defensively. It was impossible that she, Paula Grey, SIS Operative and killer of men, would be one of those women.

"It's just the way some men are, Paula."

Was he talking about Tweed, or her poor judgment in boyfriends?

"If you ever want to talk about it, call me. We'll have dinner," Newman rubbed her unbruised shoulder, then left her standing there, numb.

No matter. She had done her job, however unintentionally. No doubt she'd saved some poor bastards and undoubtedly countless women who would never know the pain and terror of a man with heavy fists.

She gave herself a mental shake, nodded, and returned to her desk. She wouldn't lose sight of Lynn Stroud, no. Lynn was a part of her, and she a part of Lynn, and she would cripple herself if she didn't accept all aspects of her own person, the good and the bad. She was the same person she had always been.

Except now she knew how much she could be fooled. Little wonder Tweed was the way he was, not allowing anyone in save his ex-wife. A mistake she wouldn't make a again. This was her life, she would live it on her terms and everyone else could go to hell.

Mind made up, Paula put more paper into the Selectric typewriter and began to type.

~*~ fin ~*~


End file.
